


Caught in a Hurricane

by wynnebat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Bisexual Character, Codependency, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Getting Together, Headaches & Migraines, Horcruxes, Hurt/Comfort, Minister for Magic Tom Riddle, Non-canonical magic, POV Tom Riddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-06 04:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16381085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: Harry Potter storms into his office with all the subtlety of a hurricane, knocking Tom's future out of balance once again. This time, he doesn't mind.





	Caught in a Hurricane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Atlanta_Black](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanta_Black/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this fic, Atlanta_Black!

The tapping of footsteps echoes through the hallway outside his office. Ever since his resurrection, Tom’s sense of hearing has been better than average for a human, and with his headache, the tapping feels as though it is rapping against his very head. It is a ministry holiday. He has no scheduled meetings today, only reports from his Death Eaters to go through, ones he cannot open from the minister’s chair. For once, the most irritating report is Lucius’. As a whole, Lucius knows better than to test him. Perhaps that is why the report is written is such minuscule fucking font—to distract from Lucius’ failings. It only tempts Tom to throw the report at his approaching visitor. There is hardly a pause between the footsteps stopping at his door and his door swinging open. Before he even sees her, he knows who it is. There is only one person who would have the gall to presume she would be welcome in his office at any time. Especially when the girl in question should be in school, where she belongs, not harassing the Dark Lord, secret ruler of wizarding Britain, official minister for magic.

Harry Potter storms into his office with all the subtlety of a hurricane, the door knocking against the back wall as she enters. The clang feels as though a piece of his skull is breaking off to worsen his headache even more. Tom hadn’t authorized her visit. He would blame the house elves, but there is never anyone to blame except the force of nature that is the Girl Who Lived.

Tom looks between her and the door. 

With a conciliatory wave of her wand, the office door slams shut behind her. It’s as close as she gets to considering his wishes. A decade ago, she hadn’t been nearly so impudent, but she’s a teenager now. Less of one than she used to be, considering she is now in the final stretch of her last year of Hogwarts, but she still stomps into his office wearing her Hogwarts uniform and with a schoolbag slung over her shoulder.

“Don’t you have some place else to be?” Tom sets his quill back in its holder. There would be no multitasking when Harry is here. 

Harry gives him a look that might cow anyone else. Tom likens it to a kitten’s. “I don’t want to be somewhere else. If I go somewhere else, they’ll make me go to class.”

“Horrifying,” Tom says, dryly, and watches her conjure a loudly red and gold chair. He would need to speak with the board of governors, Flitwick can’t possibly be teaching them to create such monstrosities. The red fabric of the chair looks plush and comfortable, the gold trim gaudy in a way that suits a Gryffindor. Harry throws her bag to the floor and sinks into the cushions with a sigh of relief. It’s been years, but Tom can still remember the way that easy comfort feels. He has no doubt that she copied the Gryffindor common room’s cushions in her design. Without much hope, he orders, “Play truant somewhere else.”

“But Tom,” she says, resting her chin against the arm of the chair, “I just got here.”

His name always sounds different from her lips. It’s irritating, or so he often pretends, as though irritating and endearing haven’t always been two sides of the same coin with her. They’ve been bound far too tightly for it to be anything else; even now, after weeks apart, their schedules providing for little time to see each other, he cannot be truly irked. Still, he says, “You’ll be able to just get somewhere else as easily.”

Harry huffs at him, a small, annoyed little sound. “You’re grouchier than usual today. Do you have a headache or something?”

“Yes.” He expects her to leave, but perhaps that’s too much to expect from her. 

“I’ve got the perfect thing,” Harry says instead, sliding out of her conjured chair. “Come here, I’ll show you. Ginny taught it to me.”

Ginny’s name doesn’t do anything good for his headache. The Weasley family itself is one unending pain in his ass, worsened by the fact that he remembers how it felt to love them. They don’t trust him or even his less polarized political positions. Tom would’ve given in and arranged for Arthur’s transfer to somewhere cold and faraway had it not been for Harry’s love for them. Plain as day on her face when she saw them and the vexing memory of it inside himself. 

At Harry’s expectant look, Tom gives in and walks around his desk. He pauses for a moment in front of the chair, unable to bring himself to sit down in the sea of gold and red. “Can’t this be done from my own chair?”

“Nope,” Harry says, grinning at his expression. “The colors are necessary.”

With a sigh, Tom relents. Or perhaps continues to relent; this is only a moment in one long line of moments where he’s found himself making allowances for her that he would’ve never made for anyone else. At least he was right; the chair is as comfortable as it looks, as is the fact that he is surrounded entirely by her magic. He can feel it against his hands as they grip the yielding arms of the chair, in the skin on the back of his neck as he tilts his head back across the top of the chair. Even the parts of him that are covered with fabric feel warm as he feels her magic in the chair, thrumming against him like it used to so long ago. 

He doesn’t close his eyes as Harry gently touches his hair. She doesn’t ask him to. Her green eyes are focused on the brush of her hands against his skin, his forehead, and in the meanwhile, Tom watches her and wonders what she sees. Sometimes he feels artificial, like he’s not quite human no matter how hard he pulls this human skin against his bones, no matter how perfectly his brown hair rests against his head. No one has ever implied him to be anything but. It is only a conjuration of his mind, this incompleteness. He’d had a choice, years ago, and he’d made it. 

His magic easily uncovers the tendrils of her own magic sneaking its way into his temples. He doesn’t block them. Not only is Harry’s magic nearly as familiar as his own, but he knows this technique. It’s one favored by healers; he’s surprised Molly Weasley would’ve known it to teach it to her daughter. His headache begins to disappear. Tom is grateful enough that he deigns to be polite and ask, “And how is that girlfriend of yours?”

“That girlfriend,” Harry huffs. With the position of her hands now, he can’t see her eyeroll, but he can sense it all the same. “Would it kill you to use her name?”

“Nothing can kill me.”

“Except maybe modesty.” Harry tugs at a lock of his hair. It stings for only a moment before it’s gone just like the headache. 

“Rulers of their own countries have no use for such a thing.”

“I doubt you ever even had it. Ginny’s good, thanks for asking, even though she hasn’t been my girlfriend for months now.” Her hands move in time for him to catch the tail end of her expression. Tom hates the feeling her wistfulness creates in him, the way that he cannot even appreciate her touch as he had only moments ago. But her next words aren’t of Ginny, but, “I miss this. Don’t you?” When Tom says nothing, her fingers trail against his forehead. He leans into the touch like a flower to sunlight. “I miss being close to you.”

“We still are,” Tom says in reply. It’s a form of truth, but nothing near how completely he understands her words. 

He hadn’t freed himself from her scar for this. He hadn’t searched for independence and torn them both in two just to mourn what could have been had he stayed. Even now, he doesn’t regret his decision. He’s gotten everything he’s ever wanted. Tom is well-loved as Minister Riddle and feared as the Dark Lord, who is only known to still exist in certain circles. Still, he is a greedy man, and he’s always wanted more than he has. He and Harry are intertwined to hell and back, horcruxes and prophecies binding them so closely that it is as though fate itself chose to laugh at them. In a way his existence begins from the moment he was torn away and blasted into her scar by the Killing Curse. He remembers his former life as Voldemort, but the memories are duller than the ones he’s gained since. Since they’ve gained, because for those early years of life, it had been hard to tell when Tom ended and Harry began. Dividing themselves had been necessary; that doesn’t mean he doesn’t wonder what it would be like, to be them again instead of simply himself. 

In the years since their separation, he’d merged with the other horcruxes, becoming—well, not a they, as they were all the souls of Tom Marvolo Riddle—but something else, something more. The summation of one Tom Riddle, cracked and jagged and lacking the glue that was the main soul. Tom would take it happily considering that the main soul is a swirling mass of insanity locked inside the depths of the earth. Tom would rather be as he is now than whole and insane. 

With Harry’s magic all around him, with Harry herself so close, he feels perfectly whole. 

It is that same greed that prompts him to lift his hand, to touch her cheek. He knows every inch of her, from the way it feels when her cheeks grow hot to the alignment of every freckle on her body. It hadn’t been anything special back then. He was her and she was him, separate but together. It was only later, when they separated themselves, that Tom had no use for all of this knowledge. He still keeps it, hoarding it like a dragon for days when they are too busy to see each other. 

“I miss it, too,” Tom finally says, the inevitable confession crashing down on him. He’s only a man, staring up at a hurricane in shades of black and green. “We were something, weren’t we?” Something indescribably great, two souls in one body, two magics. Two hearts, but only symbolically. 

Harry nods, causing his hand to move across her skin. And it is hers, no longer theirs, and far more special for the fact that she allows him to touch her. “I don’t just miss being us,” she murmurs. “I miss you, too.”

 _You have me,_ he thinks. It’s always been too fucking true. “What are you saying?”

“We could be a different sort of us. I’ve thought a lot about it.” She reaches up, resting her hand atop his own. Her skin is warm on both sides of his hand. “It won’t be the same, but it might be even better.”

He wonders if she’s thought of this on the same dark nights as he has, if they’d been separated by space yet their thoughts had once again aligned. It’s heady, that they can perhaps achieve a synergy of two instead of one. Two people, working and growing together, twining their lives around each other’s as they would their bodies. There is no part of Harry that he doesn’t want. Every part he knows, every part he doesn’t because of how long it’s been since their separation, every part is precious. 

Tom reaches for her with his other hand, guiding her head down. Her eyes are alight with anticipation. His own can’t be any different. It’s a soft meeting of lips, their positioning too awkward for much more, but it’s not tentative. It feels as though he’s spent his life walking toward this moment. 

“Better?” he murmurs into the tiny bit of space between them. 

“Kiss me properly, and we’ll see,” Harry says, but she’s smiling. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](https://crownwithoutstones.tumblr.com/).


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